Payment Components have been advising financial institutions, banks and
software companies for over eight years, with regards to their SWIFT
financial messaging solution provider needs and we are often asked by
clients; What are the key architectural factors to consider before
implementing their SWIFT related project?

And as we believe that every financial institution, bank and software
company should have a thorough understanding of each of the
architectural factors they need to consider, before implementing a SWIFT
related project, we have set these out in this article.

The 5 Key Architectural Factors You Should Consider
Before Implementing a SWIFT Related Project

1. Recruit the right longterm
team

You will need to ensure you have analysts that understand and are
prepared to dig deep into the SWIFT rule books, understand the relevant
message flows and follow up on these each year as they are updated.

2. Don’t lose your key SWIFT talent

It will take deep domain knowledge of SWIFT libraries and your particular
business needs to provide and longterm
manage your SWIFT related
project successfully, so relying on a small internal team or individual will
risk leaving your organization very exposed, if a team member leaves your
organization.

3. Relational databases are not always the right choice

SWIFT messages substantially differ from each other. And there is no
relational schema that will accommodate them all. You can of course
design a generic model (Tag, Value, etc), but you are going to experience
performance problems when trying to fetch them. So, we would advise that
you consider another option such as NoSQL databases.

4. Focus on making your application remarkable

Is spending a considerable level of your organization’s internal resources
understanding, building and validating cumbersome SWIFT messages, the
best investment? You might consider partnering with a specialist, third
party SWIFT libraries provider instead, which would enable your internal
team’s resources to be deployed on making your application remarkable,
instead.

5. The SWIFT application journey is infinite

Once your SWIFT related project is implemented, you will need to factor in
potential annual updates following the issuing of new SWIFT guidelines.
Meaning you will need to assign a specialist role to someone to follow
these updates and ensure they possess the necessary development
capabilities to implement without affecting the live application(s).
Consequently, it is advisable to decouple validation from the message
creation having
an industry strength and guaranteed implementation
either as first or second level validation of the messages your application
creates will provide an additional layer of security and compliance.

Conclusion

If you represent a financial institution, bank or software company and are
considering the implementation of a SWIFT application, I hope considering
these five key factors will help you ensure your SWIFT application is
implemented successfully for today and for your organization's future
SWIFT messaging requirements.
And of course Payment Components would be delighted to help you
ensure each of these key factors is accounted for and provide you with a
comprehensive quotation for your specific SWIFT financial messaging
project.